


Home on Mountain High

by Azzandra



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Brotherhood of Steel Went Kablooey, Community: falloutkinkmeme, Friendship, Gen, Post-Apocalyptic Slice of Life, The Minutemen are at the top of the pecking order now, look at these dirt farmers adopting a weird hairy hermit, settlers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-11 16:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7059529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Starlight Drive In has its settlers, and also a squatter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Cup of Sugar

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to a [kink meme prompt.](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/7011.html?thread=19282275#t19282275) (Spoilers in the link, I guess?)

When Tracy Bowman first arrived at the Starlight Drive In with her little ones, it was to the prospect of hard work and at least temporary shelter. But it was good, or at least it was better than how she'd been surviving so far. It was work with her hands in the dirt, and with a weapon only to defend herself if needed. Dirt was clean, not like blood. She had enough of blood.  
  
She kept her head down, metaphorically speaking, but also literally as she was assigned to growing carrots and gourds. She knew a thing or two about the stuff, though she didn't elaborate on the source of that knowledge, and nobody asked her to. Another settler, Georgie, knew a thing or two about mutfruit, and between them and two of Tracy's kids, they managed to keep a handsome garden for the entire settlement.  
  
It gave her the opportunity to keep an eye on her two eldest, who were shooting up like weeds and were beginning to get that dangerous look in their eyes that kids got when they were just settling into their stupid phase.  
  
Her youngest Claire was not any smarter than her other two, but at least she was a tiny thing. Six or seven--Tracy had lost count a bit during her bad days, and Claire hadn't been old enough to keep count herself--but bold as you please, and taking full advantage of the opportunity to run wild.  
  
And Tracy didn't need to keep an eye on Claire to hear her shrieking and laughing when she was off with the other kids on the settlement. There were only two besides Tracy's own, a boy and a girl a little bit older than Claire, but she ran them ragged around the Drive In.  
  
"Keep away from the water," Tracy would say daily, "and keep away from the screen."  
  
And Claire would listen, or if not, one of the other adults would chase her off from where she wasn't allowed, but mostly Claire mumbled an 'okay, mommy,' and ran off to play, while Tracy and her other kids and Georgie tended to the garden.  
  
That was life for Tracy Bowman and her family.

* * *

It wasn't until weeks later, when the carrots were just getting big and the provisioners brought new seeds, that Tracy was startled out of her thoughts on subsistence agriculture by a question she did not expect.  
  
"Mommy, are we not supposed to play near the screen because of the ghost?" Claire asked, blinking up innocently as she scraped her bowl clean and licked her spoon.  
  
"What ghost?" Tracy asked, taken aback by the question.  
  
She knew about the booby-traps at the doors, because they were still waiting for someone to come and defuse them. The settlement was expanding, and they might find a use for that big old building. Claire might have not been aware of the booby-traps, but then where had she gotten the ghost idea?  
  
"The ghost in the screen," Claire said, and Tracy frowned, wondering if maybe the projector was going off at night, or something of the sort. "His name is Angelo."  
  
Tracy's next thought was, imaginary friend.  
  
"You gave the ghost a name?" she asked.  
  
"I didn't _give_ it to him, he told me it!" Claire replied, in the kind of annoyed tone little children always used when the adults were being slow on the uptake. "He lives in the screen."  
  
"What does he look like?" Tracy asked.  
  
Claire thought about it for a bit before answering.  
  
"He's really big and he has orange pants. I think. I only got a little look at him."  
  
"Is he scary?" Tracy asked.  
  
"Mm, no. He tries to scare us, but he's not very good at it because he never yells," Claire replied.  
  
Well, that was... singular, Tracy supposed. A new settler? A squatter? Tracy tried to think if she'd seen anyone with orange pants lately, but she had to admit she didn't pay that much attention to other people.  
  
Then Claire hopped out of her seat and ran outside to play, and Tracy had a long day of work ahead of her, so the whole thing was put away from her mind.  
  
It was a few days later, as Tracy was plucking fat, succulent carrots from the ground, that she heard the shots. A pop off in the distance, and then another, and another.  
  
Georgie emerged out of his modest mutfruit orchard, his jaw working in worry, and he fixed his burnt eyes on the horizon. He was long-lived for a ghoul, not quite pre-war but just about, and thus took all the dangers of the Wasteland in stride. No molerats, radstorm or swaggering raiders ever made him so much as raise an eyebrow in alarm, but this time he looked at Tracy with something akin to worry on his face.  
  
"Ain't that where the kids were playing?" he asked.  
  
Tracy's heart wrenched in her chest, and she looked off towards the screen. They weren't supposed to, but that was where their voices had been coming from. Tracy dropped her bucket, startling Georgie and sending carrots spilling everywhere.  
  
She wasn't sure when she started running, but she did, with a speed only desperation could have given her.  
  
Tracy came across the ferals first, their heads split open across the pavement. Three, four, a pile of desiccated limbs and loose, spongy skin, but dead.  
  
She found Claire huddled against the wall of the building, wiping her nose with her sleeve while tears cut streaks through the dirt on her face. Tracy scooped her up, and ran back, towards the diner and towards shelter.  
  
She propped Claire up on the hood of a rusty old car and checked her for injuries, but found nothing except the common childhood scabs: a skinned knee, some small scratches. No sign that a feral ghoul had ever gotten its teeth in her.  
  
"You alright, Claire?" Tracy asked, voice shaking.  
  
Claire nodded.  
  
"Angelo shot them, mommy," Claire replied, still sniffling, but her tears now starting to dry.  
  
Tracy remained stunned silent for a few moments, before turning to look at the screen. Up on the roof, if Tracy squinted against the sun and really focused, she could almost maybe see something moving on the roof of the screen.  
  
"Angelo who lives in the screen?" Tracy asked.  
  
Claire nodded.

* * *

 

When the settlers all gathered together that night, it was partially to discuss new defenses, but mostly to argue about how some strange man with a disturbingly good aim had been living right under their noses the entire time and they had not noticed.  
  
"Well, he hasn't killed us yet, he probably doesn't mean us ill," Georgie had opined.  
  
"That's bullshit and you know it," another settler, Emily, had retorted. She was a rough one, constantly patrolling the perimeter, pacing like a dog whiffing vermin, and muttering to herself constantly. Figured she'd take it the worst of them all.  
  
Somewhere at the middle of the spectrum was Lyall, who adjusted his spectacles nervously, scratched at his bald spot, and advocated on ignoring the entire thing. Nothing bad had come of the situation so far, maybe nothing would.  
  
Even Sarah, Tracy's eldest, seventeen and figuring herself an adult, opined that they should just give the man a wide berth and maybe he'd eventually leave. Cary and Wilhemina Foster, the parents of the other two kids in the settlement, advised that maybe they should take precautions.  
  
They were still all discussing what to do when Tracy slipped out and made her way to the vegetable patch.  
  
Her upended bucket of carrots was still where she'd left it, and she filled it back up, carrot by carrot. She picked off and placed three carrots aside as she did, and tied them together with string afterwards, like she was going to sell them off at the market.  
  
She had no idea what she was doing when she walked up to the screen and knocked on the side door. Maybe she was still plum stupid, the same kind of stupid that had her run from home at fifteen and have three kids by three different men whose faces she didn't even recall. But like everything she did, it seemed like a good idea at the time. She knocked and she waited.  
  
She didn't expect an answer and that was all well and good, because she didn't get it. But as the wind died on a bit, she heard the scuff of shoes against the floor from the other side of the door, and she figured this was as close as she'd get.  
  
"That was my kid you saved," Tracy said. Her tone was a bit too harsh, sounding like she was scolding the man for what he did, but Tracy rarely had any softness left for anyone but her children. Still, she tried. "That was my Claire. I'm going to leave something for you here, okay?" She placed the bundle of carrots on the ground before the door. "It's not a bomb," she added. "But if it's not gone by morning, I'm taking it back. Would be a waste of food otherwise."  
  
Then she left. She wasn't sure what that would accomplish, if anything. But there it was. A payment of sorts. A... thank you.  
  
She went back to the dingy shack she inhabited with her kids, curled up behind Claire on the mattress, and slept with her baby against her chest. She slept deeply for a while, and then lightly until morning.  
  
The next day, the carrots were gone.  
  
Tracy wasn't sure, but she thought that maybe she was pleased about this.

* * *

 

"What do you think about this whole thing?" Tracy asked Georgie the next day.  
  
He'd set up a low table and a few patio chairs in the shade of his mutfruit. 'Union rules,' he'd said with a grin. He whipped up some of that Old World lingo sometimes, and explained some things his parents had told him about pre-War life. He'd been the one to tell them all about what a drive-in movie theater was, and how it worked, though Tracy still only half-believed him.  
  
Anyway, he liked working slowly as he cleaned his mutfruit trees of dead wood and vermin, and taking frequent breaks, sitting in his chair and admiring his little trees. Carrots and gourds were not quite as aesthetically pleasing, but Tracy joined him that day, because she wanted to pick his brain.  
  
"I say leave him," Georgie replied, before taking a gulp of beer. The cooler next to the patio chairs was the other thing that occupied Georgie on his breaks.  
  
"You're a ghoul," Tracy pointed out bluntly.  
  
"Yep," Georgie agreed.  
  
"People don't much like ghouls."  
  
"Nope."  
  
"What if he decides he doesn't much like _you_ one day?"  
  
"Would be a tough break for me, then, eh?" Georgie grinned, displaying rows of yellow, chipped teeth. Not a reassuring image on any level, not on a purely visual one, nor in regards to Tracy's hopes for his continued survival.  
  
Georgie must have sensed Tracy's disapproval. He passed her a beer and shook his head.  
  
"You think we should be more neighborly with him?" Georgie asked.  
  
"Maybe," Tracy said.  
  
"Show up on his doorstep, with an apple pie? Ask to borrow a cup of sugar?"  
  
"What's apple?"  
  
"...See, questions like that illustrate why people don't act neighborly anymore. Apple used to be a fruit. Made good pie. Got extinct when the bombs fell."  
  
"Okay," Tracy said. "What's the cup of sugar for?"  
  
"We're getting besides the point here. What is it that you want to do about the guy? It seems like everyone got their say on this issue except you."  
  
Tracy thought about it for a little while, and realized she hadn't completely figured it out either before sitting down for this talk with Georgie. But she didn't like having some unknown element nestled so near their settlement, practically under their floorboards, and she wanted to assess him before she decided what ought to be done about the man.  
  
"Talk to him, I guess," Tracy said.  
  
"Well," Georgie said, "talking's free. It's the listening where things tend to fall apart. Good luck."


	2. Odd Days Out, Even Days In

If any of the other settlers reached any conclusion, it was to do nothing for now. They sent word out to the Minutemen, and if all went well, in a matter of a few weeks, the General would arrive to sort the whole thing out for them. A cowardly solution, maybe, but it was the rare breed that managed to survive in the Wasteland through acts of reckless bravery. Mostly that was the General.  
  
Tracy didn't know how to make any sort of pie, and Georgie still hadn't explained what the cup of sugar would be for, but she got a few strips of cured meat and a crate of beer. At the end of the day, when her chores were done, and most of the other settlers were crowded around the radio in the diner to listen to the same Silver Shroud radio play they'd heard the same time last month, Tracy headed towards the screen.   
  
She banged on the door for a while, stopping to listen for movement, but she didn't hear anything much this time. She still got some sense that the man was there, waiting to see what was going to happen.  
  
"Listen, hey. You like beer?" Tracy yelled at the door. "I got beer. Traded an old pipe pistol for it, and it tastes about as good as the pistol, but it's something to drink, at least. You want any?"  
  
There was no answer.  
  
"Well, anyway, I'm going to be sitting here drinking it for a while. I'll put one here on the ground. If you crack open the door you can see it."  
  
Then Tracy sat down with her back against the wall, next to the door, and popped the cap off a Gwinnett Pale Ale. She started drinking, just as she'd said.  
  
It was a balmy late summer evening. It wasn't quite cold yet, but the heat had melted off into pleasant lukewarm breezes. It made it easier to work during the day, but there was now a bite of chill during the night and towards the morning. Tracy had scrambled and gotten her children blankets when a trader last passed through. She could do without for a while longer, or sleep under Claire's blanket, so they could keep each other warm and she could make sure Claire was always covered.  
  
Tracy wasn't sure what they'd do when winter came. The diner still had holes they hadn't found and plugged yet, and the little shacks they'd built, slumped against the diner wall, were not very well insulated either. The Fosters were saying that the General would send building material soon so they could get proper shelter up before the real cold started, but Tracy found herself planning for the worst anyway.  
  
She was at the bottom of her first beer when the door cracked open slowly. From the corner of her eye, Tracy saw only indistinct shadows. When a hand reached out for the beer, it was like it split off from the dusty depths of the building itself. Olive skin, but coated in a thin layer of concrete dust, and out of the sun for too long, almost sickly. The fingers were firm and sure as they grasped the bottle, but the motion was a bit too twitchy when they pulled back. The door closed with a startled thud once the beer disappeared past its threshold.

Tracy listened, and heard the pop and hiss of the beer being opened on the other side of the door. She took a swig--she imagined in tandem with Angelo--and smacked her lips.  
  
"Got some meat to snack on, too, if you don't want to drink it on an empty stomach," Tracy offered, and took out the cured meat. She placed a strip of it on a plastic plate just outside the door, where the beer had been.  
  
There was less of a hesitation this time. The door opened a crack more. The hand reached out to pull the plate, but when the plate wouldn't fit through the stingy little crack, the hand scooped up the meat instead and whipped back inside with it. This time, in a show of trust, the door remained cracked open.  
  
Like feeding a wild stray, Tracy thought ruefully, though she had never done anything quite so stupid as a kid. Food was barely enough for people where she'd grown up.  
  
Tracy opened her second beer, and considered that Angelo might have been starved for more than food and drink inside that building.  
  
"You got a radio in there?" Tracy asked, and was met with silence. "We have a radio back at the diner. There's a Silver Shroud play tonight. There's one most nights. I've heard this one, though."  
  
She continued in this vein for a while, telling Angelo about the play, her opinions on it, the varying opinions and taste levels of her fellow settlers, and a story about the time she found a couple of pages from an old Silver Shroud comic in an outhouse and how, to this day, she didn't know the context for them but still thought about the bewildering scene sometimes.  
  
Her mouth was dry by the time she realized how long she'd been speaking--longer than she'd spoken with anyone in the settlement, even Georgie--and she took a swig of her beer before she returned to her original question.  
  
"Anyway, you got a radio in there?" she asked.  
  
"...No," came the reply. "It's just me."

* * *

 

Tracy didn't get much more out of Angelo that night, but the next morning she gathered up Claire and the two Foster kids and floated some questions their way. The kids--Claire especially--scuffed their shoes against the ground and gave each other sidelong glances, because they knew they were not supposed to go near the screen with its booby-traps, and they had a vague sense that not telling anyone about Angelo was something that would have normally gotten them in trouble.  
  
Tracy reassured them with a box of Fancy Lads; if bribery had worked on getting Angelo to open up, it would work just as well on little kids.  
  
Sure enough, the kids were a lot more forthcoming with their mouths stuffed with snack cakes, albeit a bit harder to understand.  
  
Angelo went out sometimes, because he came back with scavenge some mornings. He had a laser rifle, which he waved at the kids to keep them away, but he was thus far ineffectual because he flinched away if any of them got too close. He once shot a molerat when it got too close to one of the Foster kids.  
  
The Foster siblings also agreed he had orange pants, a detail which they apparently found both memorable and amusing.  
  
Tracy dismissed the kids so they went off playing, and then went back to her own work. As an afterthought, she also dismissed her two eldest from work that day; Tommy and Sarah blinked in surprise, but did not question their good fortune, and dispersed promptly.  
  
They were perhaps off to engage in some delinquent teenage behavior, like loitering or listening to music too loudly. Tracy did not know exactly. When she'd been their age, she'd also been alone and scrounging for survival. She had no intention of ever making them feel that that was the preferable option to living another day under their mother's roof.  
  
"Georgie," she asked later that day, "what would you like in exchange for some mutfruit?"  
  
"Hn, I dunno, Tracy," he replied. "I was going to save some of those early ripe ones for myself. What have you got?"  
  
Tracy went over the stuff she had in her head, but her worldly possessions were either tragically few, or necessary for taking care of her kids. She had to admit she probably didn't have anything Georgie would want.  
  
"Well, I'll slip you a mutfruit for free if you need it that badly," Georgie said, "but what is it for?"  
  
"It's for the ghost in the screen," Tracy said.  
  
Georgie looked alarmed.  
  
"He asked you for mutfruit?"  
  
"No," Tracy said, "but a case of beer and some meat worked to get him talking. I figured some mutfruit would win him over some more."  
  
It was at that moment, unfortunately, that Emily rounded from behind the copse of mutfruit trees.  
  
"Are you fucking kidding me?" she hissed. "You've been feeding the goddamn _stray_?"  
  
Tracy almost dropped her trowel, startled as she was by Emily's appearance, but instead readjusted her grip and scowled at the woman. She was always skulking around the settlement, terrified of some attack, and while it probably wasn't Emily's intention to eavesdrop, she did end up dropping into conversations at times.   
  
"That's none of your business," Tracy retorted coolly.  
  
"Shouldn't be any of yours, either!" Emily said. "Just stay away from the guy, the General's coming in a few weeks, and she's going to get him sorted."  
  
"A few weeks is a long time, and he's our problem in the meanwhile," Tracy said.  
  
"She has a point, Em," Georgie interjected. "He's not a leaky radiator, it's not like we just need to wait for the landlord to have a look at it."  
  
"Shut up, George," Emily snapped. "Nobody ever knows what you're goddamn talking about, anyway."  
  
"As opposed to when you open your mouth," Georgie replied, "and people _know_ that bullshit's coming out."  
  
Emily did not even look Georgie's way as she pointedly stomped on his foot. Georgie made a hiss of pain and hopped back.  
  
"You better not get us all killed," Emily growled at Tracy, and whipped around to leave.  
  
Tracy snorted. Georgie, rubbing his sore foot, grumbled under his breath.  
  
"You know what?" he said. "I'm getting you a whole fucking crate of mutfruit for the guy."  
  
"It's appreciated," Tracy grinned, "even if I'm pretty sure you don't _have_ a crate of mutfruit."  
  
"For Emily's sake, I'll do my level best," Georgie added in a dark undertone.

* * *

Georgie didn't manage to scrounge up a crate of mutfruit, but Tracy insisted it was not necessary anyway. She headed out that evening towards the screen with four perfectly plump mutfruit tucked into her coat pockets.  
  
She did wonder what Angelo ate, honestly. There'd been a skewer set up over a fire in front of Angelo's door, but they had taken it early on and moved it next to the diner and closer inside the settlement, as they had been assuming nobody was using it anymore. Now only the old outline of the fire pit remained by Angelo's door, and Tracy found herself hoping that didn't mean they'd been starving him out.  
  
She knocked on the door and announced herself, and this time there is only a hair's breadth of hesitation before the door cracked open.  
  
"I have mutfruit," she said. "You want any?"  
  
An eye peered out at Tracy, from a bearded face, beneath a wild mess of stringy hair. He looked very, very tired, and Tracy heard how he dry-swallowed before answering.  
  
"I'm... going out tonight," he said.  
  
"That so? I did hear you do that kind of thing."  
  
"Odd days out, even days in," Angelo said, or more like recited by the sounds of it.  
  
"So every other day you go out, then?" Tracy asked.  
  
"It's an odd day," Angelo said.  
  
"It's an odd week," Tracy said. "Mind if I come with you?"  
  
There was some hesitation.  
  
"I have my own gun," Tracy said, before pulling back her coat and showing off the modified 10mm pistol at her hip.  
  
The door clicked closed. Tracy wasn't sure what she'd done. Perhaps he thought she was going to shoot him, but then after a few moments, the door creaked open again and she got her first look at Angelo proper.  
  
He was tall, ramrod straight like he'd been trained to it, and his facial hair was overgrown and unkempt. He did have orange pants, just like the kids said, but what the children likely wouldn't have been able to recognize was that he actually wore a Brotherhood of Steel jumpsuit, with a bomber jacket over it.  
  
Tracy reserved judgment on this. Most Brotherhood soldiers were dead, blown out of the sky by the General, and the survivors dwindling by the day. Their uniforms were fair scavenge these days, especially since trading in them could no longer draw any unwanted attention or reprisal.  
  
Angelo licked his cracked, dry lips, and looked at Tracy's hands. Remembering why she was there, Tracy reached inside her coat pocket and pulled out a mutfruit, handing it to him.  
  
He took it quickly.  
  
"Thank you, ma'am," he said, doing absolutely nothing to allay Tracy's suspicion that he might be former Brotherhood. This was the first time she'd been ma'amed in years.  
  
"What are we hunting for tonight?" she asked.  
  
Angelo cradled his laser rifle to his chest and looked off into the distance.  
  
"Ammo, water, food," he said. "That order."  
  
"The basic survival special. Got it."  
  
Angelo gave Tracy a leery look, and then a vague sort of smile, more like a reflex than any acknowledgment of a joke. Just as well, Tracy never joked about survival.  
  
They started on a wending path out through the brush, away from the roads. Tracy felt bad for it. There was no real scavenge left around here. She knew because she and her fellow settlers had picked over their immediate surrounding very carefully upon arriving to the Starlight Drive In. Angelo probably had to go far afield to find anything.

It occurred to Tracy to ask herself what the heck she was doing out here at night, in the company of a weird hermit. She watched him as he poked at some trash in a bathtub, and wondered if she was doing this because she pitied him. He was easy to pity, truth be told. Like a kicked dog you wanted to reassure.  
  
After he finished checking the bathtub, he turned to look at her hopefully, eyes sliding down to her coat pocket.  
  
Tracy took out a second mutfruit, and gave it to him.  
  
"Have you had much luck with scavenging lately?" she asked.  
  
Angelo bit into the mutfruit ravenously, licking up every drop of juice. She knew the answer even before he shook his head.  
  
"Why didn't you just..." Tracy gestured in the direction of the Drive In, "ask to join us?"  
  
Angelo stared at her for a moment.  
  
"Join you?" he asked.  
  
"In the settlement."  
  
The question seemed to stump him for a moment.  
  
"But you're..." He frowned. "You're with the Minutemen."  
  
"We're up for calling them in a pinch and supplying them when we can. But we're not soldiers. We're just us."  
  
Angelo bit into the mutfruit again, looking doubtful.  
  
Tracy thought of asking something pointed just then ( _What do you have against the Minutemen, anyway?_ ), but it felt cruel under the circumstances. Ever since the giant floating ship went down in flames, the rogue elements of the Brotherhood it left behind had turned no better than raiders. Survival was much steeper in price when you had a bulky power armor you needed to maintain, and complicated technology to protect, and a mission statement to uphold, and then the ground suddenly fell out from under you and you weren't even sure where your next meal would come from.  
  
Tracy would have felt bad for them, if she had it in her. But she did not. She'd lived long enough in the Wasteland to have no pity for people who were forced by their own strength of arms to bully others in order to maintain it.  
  
Angelo was not like that, though. Angelo was just one pitiful man living in fear of everyone around him. Funny, how if you took away the Brotherhood's technology, stripped them of their armor, and plucked them from their ranks, a soldier ended up as no more extraordinary than anyone else living in the Wasteland, and ultimately no less broken.  
  
"Hey," Tracy said suddenly, "you know where you could find something useful?"  
  
The basic survival special. Water, food, ammo. Tracy took him to her cache, the one she'd set up when she first came to the Starlight Drive In. Her bug-out bag, for when she was sure life in the settlement would become unbearable, and she would want to take her children and leave.  
  
She could set up another one, she thought, as she watched Angelo pick through the bag, eyes wide and almost tearful with relief.   
  
Later. In spring. After the thaw. She had a good thing going for the moment.  
  
Angelo opened one of the water bottles and gulped down the clean liquid inside with a worrying amount of enthusiasm.  
  
Yeah, Tracy figured she'd be around at least until spring. She had her work cut out for her, anyway. With the carrots and all.  
  
Definitely the carrots keeping her here.


	3. Routine is Just Weirdness You Get Used To

Tracy yawned her way through the next day. Even her children noticed. Sarah chided her for running wild at night, and Tommy snickered in the background over it.  
  
"Maybe you should have a curfew," Sarah said with a sharp smile.  
  
"Yes, what a good idea," Tracy replied. "We can all go to bed at the same time. Ten PM should be early enough."  
  
Sarah's mouth fell open, and both she and Tommy looked briefly horrified at the notion. But Tracy's expression remained perfectly blank and neutral, and the two had learned to recognize when their mother was pulling one over them, so they relaxed soon enough. They went back to their work grumbling and shaking their heads, like _they_ were the ones dealing with a child.  
  
Tracy took the criticism to heart, though. She couldn't spend the days working this hard, and then all night roaming the wilds. They had recently planted some tatoes, all in neat rows at the edge of the mutfruit orchard. They could have one, maybe even two crops before the winter came in. It was no coincidence that tatoes were such a staple food of the Wasteland; they grew in fast.  
  
So Tracy reserved smoke breaks for her chats with Angelo, though 'chats' might have been stretching it as nomenclature went. She puffed her way through three cigarettes every evening as she stood next to his door, and talked to a crack in the door. Sometimes Angelo would grunt assent, or scoff, or sigh, or maybe give out a dry bark of laughter at something she said. But if anyone came close other than Tracy, the door would snap shut quickly.  
  
After a few days of this, Angelo even started offering his own careful remarks, gently agreeing to some point, or disagreeing on something if he felt strongly enough.  
  
After a week, he started posing his own questions; how were her carrots coming in? How were her children? Was everything well? Had they seen the paw prints of the mongrel pack roaming around the settlement? Did they have adequate defenses? Would their provisioners make it on time?  
  
Tracy hadn't intended this from the start, but she realized that the more she talked to Angelo about the settlement, the more invested he became in its well-being. She didn't drop names or start enumerating vulnerabilities, but she started telling him tidbits of daily life that she thought might entice him to join them.  
  
He didn't, so far, but something else did happen that surprised Tracy.  
  
Two weeks passed, and the weather turned, and one evening, as Tracy took her customary three smokes outside Angelo's door, it began raining. It was a wretched rain, the raindrops like tiny pinpricks against the skin, and Tracy pulled her cap lower and her coat closer, but couldn't shake the chill.  
  
That was when Angelo's door cracked a bit wider in invitation.  
  
"You'll catch a cold," Angelo said, standing in the doorway and shifting from foot to foot uncertainly. "You should come in."  
  
Tracy was surprised, but she did so, not knowing what to expect.

* * *

 

He lived in the most depressing little concrete room Tracy had ever seen, and as a lifelong Wastelander, Tracy had seen more than her fair share of depressing little rooms. There wasn't even a proper bed, just a couch, and some other pieces of furniture, including a baby crib near the door. The crib was currently holding a carefully constructed pyramid of empty Pork'n'Beans and Cram cans.   
  
There was also a cabinet in the far side of the room, and this one was stacked with a sheer wall of ammo boxes.  
  
Tracy's mind almost boggled at all that ammo. Angelo only had his one energy weapon; the ammo was for every other kind of gun in existence, including--to Tracy's horror--a miniature nuke part of the whole monument. She'd only ever seen something like that once, in Diamond City, up for sale for an exorbitant price.   
  
"Need to keep busy," Angelo explained guiltily when he saw Tracy looking at the artfully stacked ammo boxes.  
  
Tracy turned towards the wall, where lines were scribbled in neat groups of seven on the wall.   
  
"This how long you've been here?" she asked, pointing to the lines.  
  
"Since my bird got shot down," Angelo admitted.  
  
It took Tracy a few moments to figure out that he wasn't speaking gibberish, but that he probably meant a vertibird.   
  
"Going from that view up in the air to this can't be a pleasant way to live," Tracy remarked.  
  
Angelo's expression grew drawn.  
  
"I go up sometimes," he said. "Up the stairs, on top of the screen. It's... not as high... but it..." He trailed off, apparently not knowing how to continue.  
  
"It's at least something," Tracy finished for him softly.  
  
He seemed less of a kicked dog, suddenly, and more like some sad bird with its wings broken. More tragic than pathetic.  
  
"Have you given any more thought to joining us?" Tracy asked.  
  
"I don't know anything about farming," Angelo admitted.  
  
"That job's taken, anyway," Tracy said. "But we still need people to build, to patrol, to mend things, to do any number of stuff. A strong back is never wasted."  
  
"Don't think you'd want me around," Angelo muttered, looking down and away.  
  
Tracy didn't push after that.

* * *

 

"Mom, is it true you're visiting the crazy guy in the screen every evening?" Sarah asked the next day.  
  
Tracy sighed.  
  
"You wouldn't be asking that if you weren't sure I was," Tracy said. "And his name's Angelo."  
  
"So you really are visiting crazy Angelo in the screen?"  
  
"Sarah." Tracy's tone was forbidding enough that Sarah looked abashed.  
  
But the young woman straightened her shoulders and continued working on the tato plants, tying them upright.  
  
"I don't care," Sarah said, "except Claire asked about it last night."  
  
"Claire asked?" Tracy blinked slowly.  
  
"She said _she_ wanted to play with Angelo too," Sarah said with a rueful smile.  
  
Tracy shook her head.  
  
"He's not exactly a barrel of fun," Tracy said.  
  
"Oh. Then why do you visit him every night?" Sarah asked, raising an eyebrow like she thought she knew something.  
  
Tracy gave Sarah a stern look, signifying that she better not know anything about what she thought she knew about, and in a flash of mother-daughter telepathy, Sarah got the message.  
  
"Anyway, the General's going to be coming soon," Sarah said. "Are you going to vouch for him?"  
  
"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Tracy said. "He seems harmless enough."  
  
"Yeah, but _is_ he?" Sarah said.  
  
Tracy ruffled Sarah's hair.  
  
"Hey!" Sarah swatted away at her mother's hand, indignant.  
  
"Now you're asking the right questions," Tracy said.  
  
Georgie was more enthused about the notion, but then, Georgie was always enthused about meeting new people. It was a real problem with him.  
  
Emily, on the other hand, had just taken to muttering darkly about it every chance she got. She was probably the reason everybody in the settlement had learned about Tracy's regular visits to Angelo.  
  
Most everyone else other than Georgie and the kids were hesitant to broach the subject, though.  
  
Lyall had caught Tracy one evening at supper and, while pushing his glasses up nervously, asked if everything was 'all green'. Tracy thought at first the man was talking about the settlement's crops until he specified, in his bumbling way, that he meant with Angelo.  
  
"Yeah, I guess?" Tracy said. "He hasn't done anything to anyone. Doesn't look like he intends to."  
  
"Good, good," Lyall had said, shuffling his feet in place, "that's good. Keep up the good work."  
  
And that had been the end of that bewildering conversation.  
  
Next, the Fosters had come up to her. Cary and Wilhemina were more like a single unit than a couple, just a tad too in sync with each other for Tracy to ever be completely comfortable around them. Tracy's most enduring romantic relationship had been a month long, and with a negligible part of it spent talking about anything at all. The Fosters finished each other's sentences. It was kind of disturbing.  
  
At any rate, they provided Tracy with a Nuka Cola and a bottle of bourbon. With hints and vague handsigns towards the screen, they indicated it was their gift for Angelo.  
  
"A goodwill gift," Mr. Foster had said.  
  
"A friendly gesture," Mrs. Foster continued.  
  
"I'll let him know who it's from," Tracy said.  
  
"Oh, no, please don't," Mr. Foster said, possibly alarmed at the prospect of Angelo knowing about him and his family.  
  
"Unless you think it would help," Mrs. Foster added, perhaps more shrewdly thinking that a kind gift would see them spared when Angelo inevitably snapped and went on some sort of rampage.  
  
Tracy compromised, and said she'd not tell him any names.

* * *

 

Angelo reacted to the gift with uncertain surprise when Tracy told him this, though. He had come to accept the things from her, but apparently couldn't quite believe there were more people in the world who'd want to give him things.  
  
"Do you have any clean glasses?" Tracy asked.  
  
Angelo sheepishly produced an empty tin can with the edges folded over to create a smooth lip. Well.  
  
"You're a menace," Tracy said, but she proceeded to make him a cocktail out of the bourbon and the Nuka Cola.  
  
He made a pleased sound as he drank it.  
  
"It's all in the proportions," Tracy said. "Met a guy who told me all about cocktails over one afternoon. He ran a bar literally in the middle of nowhere, but he knew his stuff."  
  
Angelo grunted in acknowledgment, sipping his drink slowly and seeming more relaxed than Tracy had ever witnessed, but this only lasted until there was a knock on the door. It was a weak knock, small and hesitant. It made them look at one another in surprise.  
  
Tracy went to the door, ignoring the way Angelo's hand fell to his weapon and he tensed in his seat.  
  
When Tracy opened the door, she was met with nothing but Claire's wide eyes, and her wild curls mussed from sleep.  
  
"I had a bad dream," Claire said, rubbing her eye.  
  
"So you walked out of the house and through the dark all the way up here?" Tracy asked, pulling Claire in and shutting the door.  
  
Claire nodded. Her shoes were unlaced, and she had thrown her coat over her pyjama, so Tracy picked her up to warm her. She threw Angelo an apologetic look over Claire's head.  
  
Angelo shrugged.  
  
"Hi, Mr. Angelo," Claire said, sending him an uneven little wave.  
  
"Hello," Angelo replied uncertainly.  
  
"I had a bad dream."  
  
"...I heard." Angelo looked around uncertainly, before picking up the Nuka Cola bottle. "Do you want some Nuka Cola? Except I don't have a glass. Sorry."  
  
"No sugar before bed," Tracy chided. "She already brushed her teeth."  
  
"But it would make me feel better," Claire pleaded, turning her wide puppy eyes on Tracy.  
  
"Until you fell asleep, and then it would just give you more bad dreams," Tracy said. "No. We're going home now. Say goodbye to Angelo."  
  
"But I just got here!" Claire said.  
  
"And it's late. You'll play with Angelo some other night." Then Tracy froze in surprise as her words caught up with her, and she turned an apologetic glance to Angelo.  
  
"You can come whenever you want," Angelo offered to Claire.  
  
"Okay!" Claire chirped. "We promise! Right, mommy? We _promise_."   
  
"Right," Tracy sighed, knowing she wasn't going to be able to weasel out of this now. "We promise."  
  
Claire beamed.  
  
"Goodnight," Tracy grumbled as she left.

* * *

 

"He doesn't have any glasses," Tracy blurted out over breakfast.  
  
They were having breakfast in the diner, as usual. Stools had been brought in by provisioners, with regards from the general, and they sat around the counter every morning as they prepared and ate their food. Lunch was more of an on the go affair, with everyone packing their own snack for the day, and dinner was had in smaller groups.  
  
Today, everyone was present for breakfast, and so everyone stopped what they were doing. Lyall stopped as he was just scraping some squirrel bits from a pan, and blinked. The Fosters also stopped fussing over their children and turned, in perfect time with one another, towards Tracy. Even Emily stopped polishing her gun long enough to give Tracy a slow blink.  
  
It was just then that Tracy realized it was the first time she'd ever spoken at breakfast, so she wasn't sure if everyone was waiting for her to clarify what she was talking about, or just surprised. She decided it was best to carry on, anyway.  
  
"Just a can," Tracy said. "He drinks everything from a can."  
  
"Mm, yummy tetanus," Georgie muttered from his seat across from Tracy, as he chewed on his fried iguana.  
  
"Oh my god, what does he eat from?" Tommy asked, eyes wide. Tracy didn't think he had much interest in Angelo's dish ware, he probably just wanted some juicy gossip.  
  
"Cans," Tracy said. "He just... he has so many of them." How did a single person get that many cans of Pork'n'Beans anyway?  
  
Everybody paused, considering.  
  
"Does he have any furniture?" Lyall asked after a few moments.  
  
"Oh my god, Lyall, _yes_ , he has furniture!" Tracy rolled her eyes.  
  
"Gotta have something to stack the cans on, after all," Georgie quipped.  
  
"Don't even joke," Tracy said, shaking her head.  
  
"What, _really_?" Georgie actually guffawed when he heard this.  
  
Tracy continued shaking her head, because at that point she wasn't even sure what to add to that.  
  
"Good, maybe they'll fall and he'll get crushed under them," Emily muttered darkly.  
  
"He also has ammo," Tracy added.  
  
"...How much ammo?" Emily wanted to know.  
  
"All the ammo everyone else in the Commonwealth isn't using, probably," Tracy said. "But he only has one gun, and it doesn't shoot most of the stuff he has."  
  
Emily seemed quite taken with the thought. Tracy hoped she wouldn't do something stupid, like try to rob Angelo. She decided to return to the subject at hand.  
  
"But not a decent glass or cup in sight," Tracy said.   
  
"Are you thinking we should spare something for him?" Mr. Foster said.   
  
"It would be a good opportunity to get rid of that mismatched crockery," Mrs. Foster said.  
  
They'd gotten the stuff dumped on them by a trader, as part of a bargain. Metal dishes were preferable in the Wasteland, more durable than china, so it would have seemed like a nicer gift than it really was. But considering how Angelo lived, anything would have been a step up.  
  
"Not the tea set, though," Lyall said.  
  
"No, no. One of the spare coffee cups, though," Mrs. Foster said. "A plate would be enough. Some cutlery?"  
  
"He has a fork," Tracy said, because she'd seen him carry it around in his pocket when she'd gone scavenging with him.  
  
"Just the one?" Georgie asked.  
  
"I didn't check, but after what I've seen of him, I'd be surprised if he had more than the one," Tracy said.  
  
"This man is a mess," Mrs. Foster remarked with a sigh.

* * *

 

Tracy was not nervous the next time she visited Angelo, later that day. Or, at least, she wouldn't have admitted to being nervous, which amounted to the same thing in her book.  
  
Claire was all but bouncing in place, and when Angelo opened his door that evening, it was much earlier than Tracy's usual visits.  
  
"She's small, she needs to go to bed early," Tracy had explained, patting Claire's shoulder. Claire peered past Angelo into his room.  
  
"That's fine," Angelo said.  
  
He moved aside to let them come in and closed the door, then turned to look at Claire. He became suddenly uncertain as he did so, like he didn't quite know the protocol on how to act around children, but then he went to a drawer, took something out, and shuffled back to Claire.  
  
He presented her with a Vault-Tec lunch box. Claire's eyes went wide.  
  
"I thought maybe you would like this," Angelo said.  
  
Claire snatched the box immediately, holding it tight to her chest.  
  
"I love it!" she yelled, making Angelo wince at the volume. After a few moments, Claire added belatedly, "Thank you!"  
  
When Angelo noticed Tracy's smile, he hunched in on himself defensively.  
  
"What?" he asked.  
  
"You found that on one of your trips?" she asked.  
  
"It was an odd day," he mumbled.   
  
Claire hit the latch just then, and confetti sprang into the air with a celebratory little honk. A knife bounced out and into the nearby wall. Claire made a sound of delight, though it was hard to say whether at the confetti, or the knife.  
  
She took the plastic knife in hand and immediately made a few jabbing motions, as if stabbing an invisible opponent.  
  
"M... Maybe that's not really an appropriate toy," Angelo said, hesitantly reaching for it.  
  
"Nah, it's fine, mommy already told me how to stab right," Claire shrugged, and continued her little exercise.  
  
"Uh..." Angelo looked at Tracy, uncertain.  
  
"Don't worry, she knows there's a time and place," Tracy said.  
  
Angelo scratched his cheek, while awkwardly regarding Claire's knifeplay.  
  
Luckily he didn't have time to get any more second thoughts on that particular subject, because at that moment there was a knock on the door. Angelo gave Tracy a look.  
  
"You got any more kids?" he asked.  
  
"A couple, in fact," Tracy replied. "I don't think that's them."  
  
Angelo stood in place, looking at Tracy for a long time, until there was another knock and he realized she wasn't going to answer it for him. His hand twitched, moved in the direction of his gun nearby, but then there was a third knock, much more impatient, and Angelo flinched, forgetting about his weapon and going to the door.  
  
He opened the door to be met by Lyall. The old man was heads and shoulder shorter than Angelo, and adjusted his glasses nervously.  
  
"Hello," Lyall said. In the crook of his arm, he carried a tall glass pitcher, and inside the pitcher were two glasses, stacked one into the other. "I understand you drink from a can!"  
  
Behind Angelo, Lyall could just see Tracy's outline as she smacked a palm against her face. This made Lyall even more nervous as he continued.  
  
"That's weird! Don't do that. Here." Lyall passed the pitcher onto Angelo, who accepted it out of sheer bewilderment. "Please take it. Goodbye."  
  
Lyall then straightened his back, turned on his heel, and marched back towards the settlement.  
  
Angelo turned to give Tracy a strange look.  
  
"You told people I drink from a can?" Angelo asked.  
  
"It _is_ weird," Tracy said.  
  
Angelo pursed his lips, as after Lyall's performance, that was hardly a criticism that could be levied against him so casually.

* * *

 

Claire was using the knife to scrape together the confetti which had been inside the lunchbox, now spread across the floor but gathering into a pile nicely with her efforts.  
  
Angelo used his new drinking glasses to pour Tracy some bourbon and Claire just a little bit of Nuka Cola, and poured his own drink in his regular can. Then he sat down and asked about how Tracy's tatoes were coming in.  
  
"They're growing in fine," was Tracy's reply. "We'll be sick of eating so many tatoes in no time."  
  
Angelo grinned a bit, and then began talking about his latest scavenging trip, and about the abandoned bus he'd found and the suitcases with clothes he'd tripped over.   
  
"Winter's coming," Tracy said, swirling her drink. "We really could use all the clothes we can get. You included."  
  
Angelo coughed, and rubbed the back of his neck.  
  
"Brotherhood jumpsuits are much more thermally sound than scavenged rags," he said. "And I also have my jacket."  
  
He gestured to the bomber jacket hanging off the backrest of the couch.  
  
"It's a very nice jacket," Tracy said. "I'd trade a couple of parkas for it."  
  
"I don't need a couple of parkas," Angelo grumbled.  
  
"Well, alright, you've talked me down. One parka for the jacket."  
  
Angelo's eyes narrowed, but Tracy had a perfectly blank poker face, so it took him a bit to realize she was joking. When he did, he gave a long exhale, something between a sigh and a huff of laughter.  
  
"I don't have much left anymore," Angelo said. "I mean, of my old life... I don't have..." He trailed off and shook his head.  
  
"Yeah," Tracy said. "I don't really get it. I've never had trouble leaving stuff behind before."  
  
"I think," Angelo said, "maybe it matters how much of the life you leave behind was something you built for yourself, as opposed to merely motions you go through. If that makes sense?"  
  
Tracy pondered this for a moment, and then looked at Claire. She was sitting on the floor and sorting confetti pieces by color in the Vault-Tec lunch box, talking to each piece as she placed it in its pile.  
  
"I think maybe I can understand that. A bit," she said.  
  
Angelo smiled at her--genuinely smiled, in a way that touched his eyes--and clinked his drinking can against Tracy's glass in a wordless toast.  
  
They drank in silence for a while, contemplating their drink while Claire counted confetti in sing-song.  
  
"Why build a life with the Brotherhood of Steel in the first place?" Tracy asked so suddenly, she even startled herself. "Sorry. If it's not too nosy a question."  
  
"No," Angelo replied, thoughtful. "It's not really a secret, and I doubt my story is different than many others. I was hungry, I was alone, and I wanted to live the kind of life I wouldn't be ashamed of by the time I died. The Brotherhood... did good work. Had good ideas."  
  
"But," Tracy said, gesturing widely, "they were so..."  
  
"So what?" Angelo asked.  
  
"They were just--" She continued gesturing while Angelo stared blankly.  
  
Tracy was clearly growing more frustrated as her gestures did not evoke any understanding in Angelo, until she dropped her hands and finally, bluntly stated,  
  
"They were such jerks."  
  
Angelo stiffened, as if slapped.  
  
"How were they jerks?" he asked, trying not to sound offended and yet failing.  
  
"Barreling into the Commonwealth," Tracy said, "with their fancy balloon--"  
  
"It was an _airship_!"  
  
"--and their megaphone, with their smug little announcement, coming to stomp around as they please."  
  
"We did not _stomp around as we pleased_ ," Angelo insisted, his brow furrowing.  
  
"You had power armor," Tracy said, raising an eyebrow. "Believe me, you stomped."

"We were only ever here to help," he said.  
  
"Nobody asked," Tracy deadpanned.  
  
"Nobody was doing anything about the Institute either!" Angelo said, his voice rising.  
  
"Still wasn't the Brotherhood that blew it up in the end, though, was it?"  
  
Angelo's expression was now thunderous.  
  
"You just don't understand," he said after a pause.  
  
"Nope," Tracy said. "Nobody ever came down from the fancy balloon to explain it to me."  
  
Angelo opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. He shook his head and went to pour himself some more bourbon, which he drank a bit too quickly. His knuckles where white as he held his can.  
  
Tracy could see he was stopping himself from arguing any further, and she felt mildly guilty for it. She was the only person he had regular contact with; he probably didn't feel free to argue and risk estranging her.  
  
The guilt quickly fizzled over into exasperation with him, however. If he stuck his head out and came over to the settlement at least for a visit, that wouldn't have been such a problem in the first place.  
  
"I'm sure you had good intentions," Tracy said, reaching for a compromise.  
  
"We all did!" Angelo burst. "It wasn't-- None of them deserved to die like that. None of my brothers and sisters deserved to be killed like--" He huffed once, twice, in paroxysms of grief and anger. The can was denting under his clenched fingers.   
  
Tracy watched the metal bend, watched Angelo bend to the wave of emotion as well, and couldn't bare to witness his discomfort. She reached out and rubbed his shoulder.  
  
"Hey. No," she agreed gently. "World just doesn't give anyone clean fights."  
  
"But it _ought_ to," Angelo said acidly. "We could have made the world fair. We wanted to. We just weren't allowed."  
  
Tracy very much doubted that they could have. She'd seen the Brotherhood with their flying contraptions, with their suits and their weapons and their whole damn army. If they could've, they would've by now. But she didn't say a think about it to Angelo. Disillusionment was not fun for anyone.  
  
Claire padded up to Angelo just then, wide-eyed and grave. Angelo nearly flinched, and blinked back tears, and looked on Claire with surprise.  
  
Claire extended her glass.  
  
"I finished my soda," she told him imperiously, and it was clear she meant he was supposed to pour her more.  
  
Angelo stared for a long moment more, before bursting into brittle laughter.  
  
"I don't think your mother wants me to stuff you with sugar before bed," he said.  
  
"Oh, okay," Claire said, then after a few seconds added, "Can I tell you a secret?"  
  
Angelo nodded, and leaned down. Claire rose on her tiptoes so she could reach his ear, and then whispered,  
  
"You can pour me some when she's not looking!"  
  
Tracy bit back a laugh, because Claire had been just a hair too loud and she heard it anyway, but she let it pass.  
  
Angelo nodded gravely, then shot an apologetic look to Tracy.  
  
Tracy, for her part, couldn't complain. Claire proved an excellent distraction from the increasingly uncomfortable bent of that conversation. She'd earned her Nuka Cola for the night.

* * *

 

The next day, mid-afternoon, Angelo was startled by yet another knock on the door. It was beginning to be a thing, he realized. He would soon be forced to install a doorbell if this kept up.  
  
He answered it only to be met with the identical beaming expressions of a middle-aged couple. The man had a tray with coffee cops on it.  
  
Angelo blinked slowly.  
  
"Howdy, neighbor," the man said, the very image of good cheer.  
  
"Honey, don't startle the man," his wife chided in a stage whisper.  
  
Angelo wasn't so much startled as completely flabbergasted by what was going on. He wondered if maybe he should have picked up his gun before answering the door.  
  
"Oh, right," the man said, and reined in his cheer by a few notches. He continued in a much more sedate voice, "So we understand you wake up around this hour."  
  
Angelo had, in fact, woken up mere minutes before. His drowsiness was likely part of the reason he thought it would be a good idea to open the door, because otherwise he'd have recognized that Tracy never knocked to the tune of _Shave and a Haircut_. Yet here he was.  
  
"We don't exactly have coffee," the woman continued, "but a trader dropped off this bag of razorgrain with us last month. It's sort of a barley hybrid, makes terrible flour, I wouldn't recommend."  
  
"Makes a dee-licious coffee substitute, though!" the man interjected, picking up one of the three coffee cups off the tray and handing it off to Angelo.  
  
Angelo took it out of reflex, and once it was in his hands, he couldn't help but appreciate the warmth of the cup, and the smell like-coffee-but-not-quite.  
  
"It doesn't have any caffeine, of course," the man continued.  
  
"Obviously," the woman laughed, "it's barley!"  
  
"But a tall hot cup of it sure does hit the spot in the morning!"  
  
"Or whenever you wake up!"  
  
There was a long pause here, as Angelo realized the couple was looking at him expectantly because they wanted him to taste the concoction they'd just handed to him. Despite misgivings, Angelo complied, taking a small sip.  
  
"It's... good," Angelo said once he did, and the couple's smiles turned downright blinding in response.  
  
It _was_ good. Not like real coffee, not exactly, but it did hit the spot. It had been too long since he'd had a hot drink, and it put him in the mind of returning from missions when the weather was wretched, and stopping in the mess hall for hot coffee and banter with his fellow soldiers. Nostalgia was both sweet and bitter on his tongue at the moment, and he couldn't help but appreciate it.  
  
"Thank you, it's... very good," Angelo added lamely.  
  
The couple exchanged glances, seemingly quite satisfied with this outcome.  
  
"Well, that'll be all then," the woman declared. "Have a nice day, Angelo."  
  
They turned to leave, and Angelo made a small sound.  
  
"What about your cup?" he asked.  
  
"Keep it," the man said.  
  
"Or stop by the diner and drop it off," the woman added, with a shrewd smile over her shoulder.  
  
They hurried back towards the diner in question.  
  
Angelo stood in the doorway for a while longer, drinking his cup of razorbarley roast coffee substitute and staring off into the direction of the settlement. He could see the shacks built in rows along the walls, the little set-up of the firepit and the chairs under the diner's overhang, even the mutfruit orchard, and a strip of the vegetable patch where Tracy and her kids grew the carrots, tatoes and gourds. He saw people moving around, from the rows of pumps, to the firepit, to the diner, to the woodpile and the scrapheap, engaged in the assorted minutia of everyday life.  
  
He had a pang in his chest, which he would've put down to caffeine if he could, but he definitely couldn't when he was drinking barley of all things, so he had to admit it was longing.  
  
Angelo sighed and didn't quite finish his drink before he went back inside.  
  
Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow he'd be able to do it.


	4. When the Landlord Drops In

The next day, however, the decision was taken out of Angelo's hands.  
  
He was contemplating the cup. It was off-white, with a chip along its rim, and stains along its bottom. He could walk over to the diner and return it. He'd used some of his clean water to rinse it out, though not enough to wash it properly, and he could walk up to the first person he found, hand it to them, and say thank you.  
  
He could do that, and he _would_ , but first he would script it out in his head so he wouldn't screw it up.  
  
He was actually a fair bit through writing the dialogue in his head when thunderous knocking on his door made him nearly jump out of his skin. It was loud and had a desperate quality to it, so much so that Angelo grabbed his gun before opening.  
  
The moment he opened the door, a bundle of clothing was flung at his face. Angelo's cry of surprise was muffled by a flannel shirt, and he had to untangle a pair of jeans from around his gun before he could get his bearings.  
  
"You need to change!" Tracy hissed at him, glancing over her shoulder and then back at him. "The General's almost here!"  
  
"...What?"  
  
"Get changed!" Tracy hissed again, and slammed his his door closed for him.  
  
Orders were at least something Angelo could follow instinctively, and he dropped trou faster than hitting the emergency release on a power suit in critical failure. He pulled on the new clothing hastily--it smelled like damp straw and unpleasant agricultural chores--before he finally pulled on his bomber jacket on top.  
  
He had the inspired idea to stash the Brotherhood jumpsuit under a couch cushion, and then he grabbed his energy rifle and emerged, blinking, into the sunlight.  
  
It was mid-afternoon, and this was by far the brightest conditions he'd experienced in months. He had been nocturnal for the most part, and locked in his room in the screen for the rest of the time. He floundered now, in the daytime.  
  
Yet here was Tracy, thankfully, to grab him by the arm and drag him along.  
  
"Mind the radioactive pond," she warned, as she took him towards the diner and the settlement around it.  
  
By the time they reached it, Angelo's eyes were done watering and had mostly adjusted to the sunlight. He wiped a hand over his face, drying his eyes.  
  
"I'll keep this safe for you," Tracy said, and swiped Angelo's weapon before he could protest, holstering it across her own back.  
  
"Wait--hold on, what am I--"  
  
Tracy pushed him in through the diner door.  
  
Angelo stumbled in, finally inside the diner that he had watched from afar until now.   
  
All things considered, he didn't know what he'd been picturing. The interior was just as dilapidated as the rest of the world, but care had been taken to clean the counters and install stools. There was a metal trashcan in the middle, used for fires judging by the soot and the small pile of wood and cardboard next to it.  
  
Most of the settlement's inhabitants were arrayed around the room: Lyall who'd given him the pitcher and glasses; Mr. and Mrs. Foster, who Tracy had said were named Cary and Wilhemina, but were never called by anything other than Mr. and Mrs. Foster; the Fosters' children, just a bit older than Claire; Emily, the weird one who Angelo often avoided when he saw her stalking the edges of the settlement with her gun at the ready; two teenagers, a young woman and a boy, both with Tracy's curly hair and complexion, so probably Sarah and Tommy that Tracy had told him about.

And then the two Angelo had never seen even from afar, and could not confuse for anyone living in the settlement. The General of the Minutemen turned to look at him from behind a large pair of black-rimmed glasses that made her seem owlish, and her companion, a ghoul dressed like a museum mannequin for the Revolutionary War exhibit, gave Angelo a hard stare that Angelo didn't appreciate.  
  
"Oh, hello," the General said, and then looked Angelo up and down. There was nothing overtly hostile in her manner, nothing to indicate she knew who or what Angelo was, but she did seem to give Angelo's attire a long look.  
  
Angelo could almost feel his jacket burn against his skin, and wondered if he had just incriminated himself out of sentimentality.  
  
"And who might you be?" the General asked with an easy smile.  
  
The answer came when the door of the diner opened again, and the rest of the settlement's inhabitants appeared.  
  
"Angelooooo!" Claire yelled, and lunged to grapple him in a hug. And grappling was probably the right word for it, because as her tiny arms clamped down around his middle, it felt like it would take a crowbar to remove her.  
  
Angelo flailed a bit, unsure what to do about this, before patting Claire's head. He shot the General an embarrassed look.  
  
"I'm Angelo, ma'am," he said.  
  
The General looked amused. Her ghoul companion seemed to be muffling a snicker. It was, Angelo supposed, preferable to suffer an indignity than an execution. Though not by much.  
  
Tracy and the settlement's ghoul had arrived as well--Georgie. Tracy would talk about his mutfruit orchard sometimes.  
  
Georgie had nothing but a petulant grin for Angelo.  
  
"So I've gotten a report about Brotherhood presence around here?" the General asked lightly, and by uncomfortable coincidence she addressed this question to Angelo, who was standing nearest to her.  
  
"Uh... y-yes, ma'am," he mumbled, because he had definitely not been practicing a script for this, and nobody had had the time to inform him of any plan.  
  
"Really?" the General asked, still calmly looking at Angelo.  
  
Behind the General, all the way to the other side of the diner, Angelo could see Emily scowl, open her mouth, and try to rise from her seat. Mrs. Foster and Sarah, sitting on either side of Emily, grabbed her by an arm each and yanked her back down. Mrs. Foster shoved a bottle of beer in Emily's hand, and gave her a quelling glare.  
  
Emily scowled deeper in response, and took a swig from the beer.  
  
"Where did you spot them?" the General asked.  
  
"Outside the settlement," Tracy interjected quickly.  
  
"And they wouldn't even pop over for drinks," Georgie added none too subtly.  
  
Tracy's jaw twitched at Georgie's glib remark, and Angelo got the feeling she was trying to stop herself from stomping down on Georgie's foot. Angelo supposed he shouldn't have been surprised that betrayal came at the hand of the ghoul.  
  
"I'll take a look, then," the General said. "Any particular direction, or should I work my way all around?" the General asked.  
  
"Oh, you should probably be as thorough as possible," Georgie said, very serious all of a sudden. "You never know where they'll pop up. Wouldn't want to find out they were right under our noses this whole time."  
  
"I'm sure someone would have noticed if they were that close," the General replied, apparently not catching on to Georgie's game.  
  
Tracy's jaw gave another twitch regardless.

"Hey, Hancock, you want to hang around here while I look?" the General asked her ghoul companion.  
  
"Aw, you sure you don't want me watching your back?" Hancock replied, as he dipped into a box of Mentats.  
  
"You can give as much attention to my back as you want on the trip back," the General replied, her voice perfectly level. "You can get to know everyone here until I get back."  
  
"Alright, then, Sunshine," Hancock replied. "You have fun now."  
  
"And you don't have _too_ much fun," the General replied with the quirk of a smile, and left.  
  
As the door closed behind her, the room descended into awkward silence. Angelo finally managed to disentangle Claire, but she had promptly foisted herself up in his arms in exchange, so now he could tell that he would be stuck carrying her on his hip for a while. He didn't mind terribly. Or at all.  
  
Everyone seemed to be staring off in a different direction at the moment, though, mostly avoiding looking at Hancock.  
  
"So," Hancock drawled, half-propped against a counter, "how wild does this place get?"  
  
There was an awkward pause.  
  
"I'm making preserves," Georgie blurted out.  
  
"I guess that answers my question," Hancock deadpanned.  
  
Georgie winced a bit.  
  
"No, no, I mean that's great," Hancock said quickly. "The guys over at the Slog make some fucking amazing things out of Tarberries. We'll have the provisioners drop off some of their jams, if you're willing to part with some of your preserves. What're they made from, mutfruit?"  
  
"Oh! Yes, we have an orchard," Mrs. Foster jumped in. "Georgie grows lovely fruit. And Tracy's vegetables are top notch!"  
  
"I believe we sent some of her carrots," Mr. Foster began as well. "Didn't we send off some of her carrots?"  
  
"To Hangman's Alley, yes, I do believe--"  
  
Mr. and Mrs. Foster took up the chatter, Emily took another tense swig of her beer, and the children mostly dispersed. Lyall still hung around, nervously wringing his hands, and Georgie stayed as well, but Tracy took Angelo--and by extension Claire--outside.  
  
"I'm sorry," Angelo said outside, as they were out of earshot.  
  
"That went great, actually," Tracy said.  
  
"Did it?"  
  
"You're still alive, aren't you?"  
  
"...That is a good point."  
  
Claire made a displeased sound.  
  
"She shouldn't kill you anyway!" Claire protested. "Why does she want to kill you? That's so mean!"  
  
Angelo gave a weak chuckle.  
  
"It's alright, she didn't try to kill me," he said.  
  
"And she won't," Tracy said to Claire, "as long as you remember that Angelo's always lived with us."  
  
"Well yeah," Claire said, giving a slightly puzzled look. Despite having had interdictions against approaching the screen, she had never really grasped the fact that the place was separate in any way from the settlement.  
  
"What do we do now?" Angelo asked.  
  
"Want to see how my tatoes are coming in?" Tracy suggested.  
  
Angelo, as a matter of fact, couldn't think of anything he wanted more at the moment.

* * *

 

Perhaps it was strange, but Angelo had never seen tatoes on the vine before. He'd grown up in a shanty-town built around a crashed airplane on the edge of the ocean, and the main source of subsistence there had been seafood. Mirelurks, mirelurk eggs, fish mutated to various degrees of murderous and dangerous, as well as strange, pulsating clams the size of dinner plates and algae that grew thick and pulpy and albino-pale...  
  
Claire scrunched her nose in disgust when Angelo described the algae.  
  
"Didn't it smell bad?" Tracy asked more diplomatically, even though it was clear by the look on her face that she shared her daughter's opinions.  
  
"Nah," Angelo replied. "Not unless it was rotting on the beach, which did happen after storms. It was mostly just briny. Good for pickling."  
  
He segued into a story of how the kids in his settlement would go hunting for mirelurk eggs, and ended up, more often than not, attacked by mirelurk hatchlings. Angelo insisted it was good practice for when they'd grow up and have to hunt full grown mirelurks, but then Claire stated that she would like to go hunting for mirelurk eggs as well.  
  
"No," Tracy said.  
  
"But--" Claire started.  
  
" _No._ "  
  
Angelo chuckled a bit nervously.  
  
"I'll take you mirelurk hunting when you're older," he promised.  
  
"What's the point if I don't get the practice while I'm small!" Claire replied, and then began to sulk.  
  
Tracy was not at all impressed by the sulking.  
  
"Don't make promises, she'll hold you to them," Tracy advised Angelo.  
  
"I'm sure she'll lose interest by the time she's old enough to actually do it," Angelo said.  
  
"Alright," Tracy said, sounding unconvinced. "Don't say I didn't warn you, ten years down the line."  
  
"What're we talking about?" came the unexpected question, and Angelo nearly jumped out of his skin.  
  
Tracy, too, in the process of pulling a weed, was so startled that she almost punched herself in the face as she pulled upwards.  
  
"Jesus!" Tracy yelled, then turned to glare.  
  
Hancock graced her with a cocky grin and a tip of the hat. He'd apparently snuck up on them by walking along the treeline of the mutfruit orchard, and none of them had seen him until he popped out from behind a mutfruit tree.  
  
Tracy glanced at Angelo, saw the way his face turned blank with worry, and realized that he was thinking the same thing; Hancock could have been standing there for a while, despite his question. He could have been eavesdropping the entire time. Both Tracy and Angelo went back on the conversation in their minds, trying to figure out if they'd said anything too incriminating.  
  
"So what are we talking about?" Hancock asked again.  
  
"The price of razorgrain in California," Tracy replied, her jaw set, daring him to contradict her.  
  
"Gettin' steeper by the day," Hancock said, nodding gravely as if he not only fully believed them, but also had his own valuable opinions to add on the topic. "So," he looked to Angelo, "how're the tatoes coming in?"  
  
"Uh..." Angelo's eyes darted to the tatoes, and then back to Hancock. "...They're mostly green."  
  
Hancock gave the tatoes a discerning look.  
  
"Huh. Yeah. Guess they are," the ghoul agreed after a long pause.  
  
Hancock reached towards the tatoes, past Angelo. He wasn't even close to touching Angelo, but Angelo still took a few steps back. Hancock turned his grin on Angelo.  
  
"Don't worry, I don't bite," he promised, with a predatory slant to his smile.  
  
Angelo huffed and crossed his arms defensively.  
  
Hancock's hand enclosed on a tato, hanging almost-ripe on the vine. He plucked it easily, and bit into it with an uncomfortable amount of relish.

"Hey, that's ours!" Claire protested, while the adults were still tense and silent.  
  
"Hm. Good point," Hancock said, offering the tato to Claire.  
  
"Well we don't want it back _now_ ," Claire said, scowling.  
  
"How about I pay you for it?" Hancock said.  
  
Claire extended her hand.  
  
"That'll be ONE HUNDRED CAPS!" she proclaimed.  
  
Hancock snorted laughing, and nearly choked on his bite of tato. He swallowed a bit too soon, and had to smack his own chest as he coughed.  
  
He looked right at Angelo.  
  
"This your kid?" he asked.  
  
Angelo looked gobsmacked by the question.  
  
"No," he said.  
  
"She's mine," Tracy said coolly, grabbing Claire's hand and pulling her next to her hip.  
  
Hancock reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out a patched up old sock. It was bulging, and by the sounds of it, probably with caps.  
  
"Here you go, kid," he said, giving Claire the whole sock. "'Bout one hundred thirty caps in there. Consider the extra a tip."  
  
"I'm gonna count it," Claire warned, cradling the sock to her chest and eying Hancock suspiciously.  
  
Hancock laugh again, this time without choking.  
  
"You're gonna get far in life, kid," Hancock said, and took another bite of his very expensive tato.  
  
Tracy sent Claire off to their shack after that.  
  
"What's the catch?" Tracy asked after Claire was out of earshot.  
  
Hancock shrugged.  
  
"No catch," he said. "Sometimes good folk deserve good things. And you seem like good folk to me." Hancock's gaze shifted to Angelo. "Give or take a few prejudices."  
  
Angelo grew flustered, and turned halfway to leave, before realizing he didn't know where he'd go to. Probably it wouldn't be safe to go back to the screen, but then he didn't know the rest of the settlement well enough to figure out where he could hole up away from any ghouls.  
  
"Must be hard for you, living with a _ghoul_ in the same settlement," Hancock continued.  
  
"It's fine," Angelo gritted out. "We don't cross paths a lot." Which was technically true.  
  
"Oh yeah?" Hancock said. "So you don't hang around the orchard much, I guess. What is it that you do, anyway?"  
  
"What do you mean?" Angelo asked, and only just saw the twitch of Tracy's fingers in the corner of his eye.  
  
"What do you do around this place?" Hancock asked.  
  
"Plenty," Tracy interjected, before Angelo fully had time to panic. She picked up a nearby bucket and thrust it into Angelo's arms. "You should fill this up," she said. "Crops need watering."  
  
Angelo knew a hint when it smacked him in the face, so he scurried away for the pumps.  
  
"Other way," Tracy yelled after him, and Angelo switched directions.  
  
"Bit weird, your friend there," Hancock remarked idly.  
  
"Strangers make him nervous," Tracy said, with an accusing glare down Hancock's way.  
  
Hancock shrugged apologetically, and then offered Tracy some Mentats.

* * *

 

Angelo kept his head down for the rest of the day, while Hancock spent the rest of the afternoon poking around the settlement. To Angelo, it looked more like he was trying to charm the settlers and offer them chems, but Tracy insisted she knew poking around when she saw it, and she remained tense and tight-lipped around the ghoul. She did still take his Mentats when offered, though, and after a while, he disappeared to some shadowy corner, possibly to intoxicate himself further.  
  
It was dinnertime when the General returned from her rounds, her rifle perched on her shoulder.   
  
Tracy, having gathered her kids and Angelo, were frying up a mirelurk egg omelet to Angelo's strict specifications, and the General walked right up to them at the firepit, her nostrils flaring at the smell.  
  
"Oh, are you making it with brahmin milk?" the General asked. "I find a little brahmin milk makes it--"  
  
"Smoother," Angelo muttered, head bowed over the pan as he checked how hot it was. "I was just _saying_ \--"  
  
"You're already done?" Tracy asked the General. Only then did Angelo's head whip up, and he noticed the woman.  
  
"Good enough for government work," the General quipped, as she put her rifle down against a shack wall.   
  
Tracy frowned slightly.  
  
"Guess you don't have those anymore," the General said, then cleared her throat. "No, it's fine. There's nothing to worry about. Those power armor suits really tear up the ground wherever they go, even the asphalt, and if there was a contingent of Brotherhood stragglers anywhere, you'd probably hear them long before you saw them anyway."  
  
The General sat herself down in one of the available patio chairs, much to Angelo's alarm, but all the mental signals he was sending at her to go away didn't seem to be working. She leaned back in her chair and made herself comfortable.  
  
"There's a crashed vertibird nearby," she said thoughtfully. "Poked around it a bit. No bodies, so it looks like whoever was flying in it walked away, or at least limped, but it's been there a long time. Probably since before this place was even settled. I'm sure we don't need to worry about anyone who was in that thing."  
  
Angelo scraped a spatula against the pan a bit too loudly, drawing curious looks not just from the General, but from everyone else as well.   
  
"The coffee cup," Angelo blurted out suddenly. "I forgot to return the coffee cup."  
  
Tracy's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but she didn't seem to know what he was talking about.  
  
"Right," she said anyway, "the... coffee cup. Where did you leave it?"  
  
"It's in my--" Angelo stopped himself suddenly, because it was in the screen. In his room. On the table next to the ammo, and next to the couch where he'd hidden his Brotherhood jumpsuit.   
  
"What?" the General said, giving him a curious look.  
  
Angelo's jaw opened and closed a few times like the hinge on it was broken, and in response, the General reached out and patted his shoulder sympathetically.  
  
"Hey, now, pal, take it easy, it's just a cup," she said. "You look like you're going to vibrate through the ground every time I see you. Don't give yourself a heart attack."  
  
"Right," Angelo mouthed. "Just a cup."

With effort, Angelo drew his attention back to the matter of cooking, trying to ignore the General. He moved to the other side of the fire, ostensibly so the wind wouldn't blow in his face, but Tracy sympathetically interposed herself between him and the general, and Sarah began asking Angelo questions about the cooking of mirelurk and mirelurk byproduct, which at least distracted Angelo.  
  
Tommy and Claire did not contribute much to that conversation, instead sitting a bit away, re-counting the caps Claire had gotten from Hancock. The General moved over to them after a while, and struck up a conversation about life in the settlement. It was harmless enough and far away enough that it gave Angelo breathing room.  
  
As the omelet was mostly done, however, and Tracy and Angelo started portioning it off, Georgie strolled right up, grinning from ear to ear.  
  
"Mm, smells like wholesome family meal here!" Georgie declared, and planted himself in the General's vacated patio chair. He picked up one of the plastic plates and presented it to Angelo expectantly.  
  
Angelo seemed momentarily taken aback, before his jaw tightened and he laid a slice of omelet in Georgie's plate.  
  
"Wow, don't _spoil_ me or anything," Georgie said in response to the size of the slice.  
  
"Angelo," Tracy interjected, looking down at Georgie's plate. She didn't sound angry, only deeply disappointed, and that was maybe the worst part of it.  
  
Abashed, Angelo cut another slice and slid it into Georgie's plate.  
  
Georgie grinned, stabbed his fork into the omelet, and took a large bite.  
  
"Now that's some good eatin'," Georgie declared. "Remind me to serve you some of my famous grilled tatoes sometime. We'd make a crack cooking team, I bet."  
  
Angelo mumbled something noncommittal and waved Georgie off.  
  
Then immediately regretted it, because the next person in line was the General. Grinning from ear to ear, she presented her plate, and Angelo pushed a slice of omelet into it while avoiding eye contact. He had no idea what she was so happy about, and he didn't want to find out.  
  
One by one, everyone got their food and settled down to eat.  
  
They were all quiet for a while, as they busied themselves with nothing but eating. Even the General seemed far less intimidating when she was munching on an omelet and making appreciate little sounds, and she hardly seemed, in that moment, like the terror who had blown up the Prydwen from underneath the Brotherhood's feet, or the monster who still hunted the last remaining survivors. She seemed, if anything, a hungry woman.  
  
Angelo ate with mechanical efficiency, finishing quickly despite being one of the last to start eating. He put his plate aside when he was done, and picked up the shell halves of the mirelurk egg, inspecting them. They were nice, solid shells, thick and even. Angelo recalled how back home they used to clean out and smooth the shells, making bowls or dishes of other small useful objects. He remembered an old man who sculpted a series of tiny, delicate dog figurines out of a shell.  
  
The least Angelo could do would be to make some bowls for the settlers here, after all the trouble they went through for him. It would make him feel better about accepting their kindness if he could offer something in return.  
  
Dinner concluded quietly. The General slunk off to find Hancock, Georgie patted his belly and praised the food one last time before heading off as well, and then Tracy had Sarah and Tommy take Claire to bed.  
  
The last ones left, Tracy and Angelo gathered all the dirty plates and cutlery, and went to the pumps to rinse them.  
  
"That wasn't so bad, in the end," Tracy opined, as she stacked clean plates.  
  
"Not dead yet," Angelo agreed, placing clean cutlery onto a different plate.

They took the plates and cutlery back to the diner after they were done, and Tracy showed Angelo where everything went. Most everyone else in the settlement was asleep, so they had only one lantern on, which Tracy toted around to light the relevant areas.  
  
When they were done, Tracy cut the light.  
  
"Don't worry, I know the way in the dark," she said. After a pause, she added, "Hey, I've been meaning to ask. What's that necklace you wear?"  
  
"...Necklace?" Angelo echoed, confused. His hand went to his neck reflexively. He looked down next, and in the darkness of the diner, there were two spots of light against his chest.  
  
Terror drenched Angelo, freezing him down to his toes.  
  
"...Was I... Was I wearing my holotags out the entire time?" he asked in a much too quiet voice.  
  
Tracy hesitated before answering, Angelo's apprehension taking hold of her as well.  
  
"Yeah... I guess? Why? What are they supposed to..."  
  
"They're for identification," Angelo explained quietly. He hadn't noticed he'd been wearing them, at this point their weight so familiar that it didn't even register.  
  
"...Oh," Tracy said after a long pause, though it didn't sound like she understood why Angelo was suddenly agitated.   
  
The General couldn't have seen them. Could she have? Would she recognize what they were? Yes, of course she would, look how many Brotherhood soldiers she'd killed, _of course she'd know what they were, what a stupid question_. But did she _notice_ them?  
  
She couldn't have, because she hadn't killed him yet.  
  
Angelo quietly tucked the holotags under his flannel shirt.  
  
"We should... go to bed," Angelo suggested, dry-swallowing but still trying to tamp down on his panic.  
  
"Sure," Tracy said. "I think I have a spare blanket for you."  
  
Angelo went along with it, because he was suddenly too irrationally afraid of approaching the screen while the General was around, and he slept on the floor of Tracy's shack, in a threadbare bedroll crammed into a corner.  
  
He woke up drenched in sweat more times than he could count that night, convinced every sound or every shift of shadows was the General come to kill him, but there was nothing of the kind once he opened his eyes and his heart stopped hammering wildly. There were the even breaths of Tracy's family, the stir of children tossing in their sleep, the wind whistling through a hole somewhere in the wall next to his ear. He wasn't used to sleeping at night, and his internal clock was going haywire.  
  
The morning came cold and rosy, and Angelo rose from bed because he was exhausted from trying to sleep, and he followed Tracy outside because he had nothing better to do. She showed him the necessary facilities of a settlement: the outhouse, the bathing shack with its one rusty stove and the two pots used to heat up water. She started a fire and heated up water for the morning ablutions, a whole pot not just for herself but for the entire settlement to use.  
  
"The earlier you arrive, the hotter the water will be," Tracy explained.   
  
She showed him where the homemade toothpaste and the scavenged soaps were stored, and she showed him how to operate the pump in the bathing shack, because it was fiddlier than the others outside.

It occurred to Angelo that she was showing him these things not merely because it gave her something to do, but because she seemed to expect him to take advantage of these things. Angelo was surprised, but pleasantly so; scrubbing himself with irradiated water from a freezing pond was not going to have much appeal in the winter.  
  
He shuffled after Tracy as she checked her crops, and he shuffled after her as she showed him to the diner and explained the routine of morning breakfast, and if Georgie made some remark at Angelo's expense, Angelo only grunted in mild disapproval and shuffled along.  
  
And just before breakfast, he shuffled right after Tracy as all the settlers gathered in the same spot, and when Angelo looked up, he was startled to realize that he'd shuffled right into the General's going-away gathering.  
  
"I hope we've made a good impression," Lyall was saying, wringing his hands.  
  
"Don't worry too much, I don't think you could've made any bad impression at all!" the General reassured. "Why, when I met Hancock over here, he was just in the process of stabbing one of his constituents!"  
  
She patted the ghoul on the shoulder for emphasis.  
  
"What can I say, it wasn't an election year," Hancock drawled, and then took a drag of his cigarette.  
  
Lyall chuckled nervously, unsure how else to react, and rubbed at his receded hairline.  
  
"Are you certain you won't stay for breakfast?" he asked, and though he was only being polite, he got more than one exasperated or incredulous look.  
  
"Nah, it's fine," the General replied, grinning at the old man. "Hancock and I like getting a good ten miles before we eat. Don't we, Hancock?"  
  
Hancock grumbled something that almost certainly wasn't agreement.  
  
"Don't let me keep the rest of you, though," the General said, and took off her hat to wave goodbye. "I'll see you again sometime!"  
  
They made their goodbyes then, and the General gave them all a final wink, and then just turned around and left, without any fanfare.  
  
Angelo stood in place, dumbfounded, even after the settlers dispersed, and watched the General and Hancock walk over the hill and out of sight.  
  
"That was it?" Angelo asked out loud.  
  
Tracy, standing next to him, tilted her head and shrugged.  
  
"Guess so," she said, sounding equally unimpressed by the anticlimax. "Let's go eat."  
  
"...Maybe she's going to get reinforcements," Angelo suggested, frowning.  
  
"If she is, I'm not facing an army on an empty stomach," Tracy said.  
  
Angelo remained quiet for a bit, before shaking his head and shrugging like he was throwing off the bad thoughts. He turned and walked briskly towards the screen.  
  
Tracy squelched down on the feeling of disappointment as she watched him go. There really was no point insisting he join them anymore, not with the General gone, and just because she was going to miss him didn't mean she had to force his arm if he didn't want to come to breakfast.  
  
She turned and walked back to the diner, joined in on cooking breakfast in the bustle and hum of yet another morning in the Starlight Drive In.  
  
And in a few short minutes, unexpectedly, a coffee cup was placed down on the counter before her.  
  
"I forgot to return this," Angelo explained, then sat down. "...What're we eating?"  
  
Tracy smiled wide, and then wider, and then the widest she'd smiled in a long while.


End file.
